Amber Run

A stunning performance from a band that could go stella this year given the right amount of exposure.

Venue: Rescue Rooms

Date: April 28, 2015

Post-Coldplay? Nu-Romantic? It’s hard to pigeonhole bands like Amber Run. They’re like Kodaline if Kodaline stopped sounding like an identikit Coldplay, or Bastille if they could play guitars.

Whatever the genre, Amber Run are a powerful force right now. With a Top 40 album and a sell-out homecoming crowd before them tonight, this could be their year.

Beginning with the building See You Soon, a blue hue making them look like a hirsute Blue Man Group, with glowing amber columns (what else?) providing contrast, it’s an atmospheric, eerie start.

The gears then shift as Pilot arouses the crowd. “I don’t wanna be the centre of anything/Just the part of something bigger”, laments front man Joe Keogh, honestly and defiantly; his larynx seemingly dipped in caramel before he entered the stage.

Hurricane and recent single Just My Soul Responding’s chiming guitars and searching vocals keep the crowd on a level of utter zeal; mellowed and content, chilled yet lifted.

“You know I used to work here…”, reminisces Joe, looking like a young Tim Burgess with a foppish mane. “It’s because of you guys we get to play here”, he continues, genuinely overwhelmed before the sleepy 5am ambles by.

The acoustic Shiver, meanwhile, is like a somnolent Dry The River, while Good Morning sounds like Two Door Cinema Club before their Second Album Syndrome set in.

“We started in a rat-infested flat in Lenton”, Joe fondly recalls, before four defiant, chest beating anthems end matters, with Spark’s clap-happy mantra of “Let The Light In” first up, before I Found’s reverb-heavy ambience slows it down before the encore.

The encore is super-charged. The seismic Heaven makes way for the stadium-sized Noah, with everyone singing its chorus back at an astounded Joe.

Amber Run are walking this. “This is our city”. No arguments there, fella.